National u-turn overshadows low-key Labour congress

It was supposed to be Hipkins’ big moment in the spotlight, but all anyone was talking about was a backtrack by Luxon.

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Monday, May 29, by Catherine McGregor. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: Tory Whanau defends her absences from public functions; billions owed to MSD by beneficiaries; and a swansong for the great Kiwi department store. But first, will Christopher Luxon regret tearing up the housing accord?

Chrises Hipkins and Luxon (image: Tina Tiller)

A policy-light Labour conference

Labour’s 2023 congress was on this weekend, and you could be forgiven for missing that it happened at all. The annual conference – Chris Hipkins’ first as leader – was a low-key affair that produced little in the way of news. The Apprenticeship Boost scheme will be made permanent, and the super age will stay at 65. That’s about it, as far as policies go. Instead, the focus was on highlighting the differences between a Labour and a National-Act government – and arguing that the latter would represent a “coalition of cuts". Noted Marc Daalder in Newsroom, “The cuts line is clearly doing well in focus groups, with the word ‘cuts’ appearing 25 times across the three speeches from ministers on Saturday.” Hipkins’ keynote speech on Sunday “was not so much about fresh sparkly policy than about the rebrand – to the Hipkins Labour Party”, writes Newshub’s Jenna Lynch. “Hipkins is willing to go where Ardern wouldn't: on the attack.” To the NZ Herald’s Claire Trevett (paywalled), the policy-light congress “was a lost opportunity – especially for Hipkins’ first outing as leader at a Labour conference. It led to the inevitable question: has Labour run out of ideas?”

Confirmed: National is out of the housing accord

As Trevett notes, Sunday “became all about the housing announcement” – the confirmation that National is pulling out of the bipartisan accord on medium density residential standards (MDRS) that deputy leader Nicola Willis helped develop. National will allow councils to opt out of the standards, which are designed to encourage townhouse building in most urban areas, and will instead require urban councils to zone land for 30 years' worth of housing demand immediately. “The law currently says you have to allow essentially the three by three [up to three dwellings of three storeys] across vast swathes of suburban New Zealand. We're saying to councils: you can pick and choose where,” housing spokesperson Chris Bishop told Q&A’s Jack Tame. Act deputy leader Brooke van Velden called National’s proposal “a complicated version” of Act’s own policy, while PM Hipkins said the MDRS might need to be changed to ensure “certainty” for developers. He also took a swipe at the Opposition: “If Nicola Willis can't trust Christopher Luxon to stand by commitments the National Party has made, why should any New Zealander?" 

Questions about the wisdom of courting the nimbys 

On Businessdesk (paywalled), Dileep Foneska says Act’s strong showing in the polls may be behind Luxon’s u-turn. Some in National, he surmises, are apparently longing for “the days when it was a vote-winning machine regularly hoarding more than 40% of the vote” and “support for ACT barely cracked 1%”. The result is a desire to “compete on the right even if it provides no net benefit for a future centre-right coalition”. For commentator Janet Wilson, the MDRS decision shows Luxon’s limitations as a political strategist. “Rather [than] seeking new voters who would live in those three-storey townhouses, he’s more concerned about the nimbys, who’d vote for him anyway”, she writes. Worse, giving control back to councils suggests National is “happy to kill off its founding philosophy of less government, less regulation, if it means more votes”. Stuff political editor Luke Malpass agrees the incident is a worrying sign for National. “Luxon has a formidable work ethic and is getting media training, but with the election only months away, the question of whether he is up to it is starting to loom,” Malpass writes.

Does super at 65 still make sense?

Back to what was supposed to be Labour’s big weekend – and its superannuation non-announcement, designed to highlight a contrast with National which backs raising the age of eligibility from 65 to 67 in phases starting on July 1, 2037. Labour’s commitment might be good politics, but Sunday Star-Times editor Tracy Watkins (paywalled) says the government is continuing to duck the “difficult conversations” that need to be had. “In the current economic environment, a policy that pays MPs and judges the universal pension on top of their already generous taxpayer-funded retirement savings schemes no longer stacks up.” 

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Bouquets and brickbats for Wellington mayor Tory Whanau

Andrea Vance had an in-depth profile of Wellington mayor Tory Whanau on the paywalled Post (and a write-off on the free-to-read Stuff) that looks at her rise to the top job, and how she’s doing six months in. “She has delivered on a promise to unite council – public spats are largely a thing of the past. But almost eight months into the job, she needs to start putting some wins on the board,” Vance writes, pointing to rates rises, leaky pipes and threats to the long-promised light rail project as negatives on Whanau’s report card. While she’s earned plaudits for, among other examples, her strong and empathetic handling of the Loafers Lodge fire, some say she’s not taking her public-facing responsibilities seriously enough. “One frequent complaint is her absence at civic functions – including monthly citizenship ceremonies, in which the mayor welcomes new residents,” Vance writes, and “councillors complain she either doesn’t turn up to public meetings, or stays just a short time”. Whanau says the demands on her time are intense. “I've told my team to prioritise what I'm going to… It's about 60 hours a week of meetings and events, and I just can't fit it in.”

Billions owed to MSD by people on low incomes 

New Zealanders with debt to the Ministry of Social Development owe a total of $2.4 billion, according to figures released by the Green Party. The debt is on loans for essentials like clothing and household appliances, and for help with bill payments, and is much higher among Māori and women. “Women owe MSD $1.6b – about three-quarters of total debt. Of that, Māori women owe over $724m, at an average of nearly $6000 each,” the Herald reports (paywalled). “Māori women… have a balance on average 50% higher than Pākehā women and more than twice as high as Pākehā men.” In addition to the loan repayments, more than $250 million is owed to Inland Revenue by families who were overpaid their Working For Families tax credit. The bill grew more than 25% between 2021 and 2022 “amid high inflation and wage growth and changing circumstances through the pandemic, pushing many families out of the criteria often without them even realising”.

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The last days of the great New Zealand department store

They once ruled our CBDs, but today department stores are in decline – and the disease may be fatal, writes Aimee Shaw on Stuff. The news that southern department store chain H&J Smith is to close its remaining stores in Invercargill, Gore and Queenstown follows the closure of Kirkcaldie & Stains in Wellington, and then later its replacement on the same site, David Jones. Internet shopping and the growing presence of standalone luxury stores are to blame, as is the rise of the suburban mall. H&J Smith was in a particularly tough spot, retail expert Chris Wilkinson tells Shaw. Its flagship Invercargill store “was one of the biggest retail spaces in Australasia, which serving a catchment of 80,000 people would have been challenging in itself,” he says. The department stores that are still standing, such as Ballantynes in Christchurch and Smith & Caughey's in Auckland, “have much larger domestic catchments and are in cities with strong tourism audiences, providing a degree more of resilience”, he adds. 

Click and collect

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‘Suddenly, they realised they might die’

The Herald’s Simon Wilson has a big multimedia feature in the Weekend Herald (paywalled) in which he talks to those in Karekare, on Auckland’s West Coast, about their terrifying experiences of the Anniversary Weekend floods. It’s a gripping, heart-wrenching read about a tiny community trapped in a titanic storm.

“Suddenly, they realised they might die. Jess sobs as she talks. ‘I remember thinking to myself that if, you know, if we get trapped in a landslide, I hope we’re together. You know? If we’re trapped in the mud then we’ll be together.’”